Sigh

"can't be bothered to get physical"

Have you seen the damage done to a human body when a bunch of burly men throw it to the ground of a car park?

Presumably if they had done that, and he had lost a few teeth, or broken his nose, or broken a rib (you know, the usual), then you would be complaining about their violent bully tactics, and that they should have used the tools provided for exactly this situation... The taser.

There is no safe or harmless solution in this situation. Any action is going to have a potential harmful outcome. Thank god we have people like you to criticise any and every action taken.

"Good on the man I say..." Yeah, he attacked three innocent people in the store, and you say "Good on the man...".

Please please please...

Firstly, "Tallbloke" was not a suspect, the police have admitted as such. Yet they took his computers and cloned his hard drives. Furthermore, they only took his two laptops and router (why the router). They left his SUN sparcs because they didn't know what to do with them. This is the biggest issue with the whole story. These police experts can only handle a windows laptop... if they have the password.

Secondly, I love your "flat-earther" comments. How original. Once again the people that make those comments forget that it was the scientific consensus that thought the Earth was flat. Tin-foil hats? Seriously?

Thirdly, the average climate skeptic has no doubt that the climate it changing, and that we are affecting it. What closed-minded flat-earthers such as yourself cannot grasp is that we object to the scaremongering and lies about how many hurricanes are caused by global warming (none), and how this year (and each and every year in the last 30 years) has seen a massive rise in the number of hurricanes and freak weather events etc (while the actual figures show them going down).

You then make the "better safe than sorry" comment that has been repeated so often. I really don't think that it is better the spend the $trillions needed for the smallest change in CO2 emissions that are negated the moment China opens another coal plant.

The money is much better spent preparing for the inevitable or research into alternative fuels. Wasting the money on yet another wind farm that only works for 30 seconds a day when the wind is in exactly the right direction and speed, and doesn't even break-even in it's energy footprint in its operational lifetime is not going to help us. It will bankrupt us however.

But don't listen to me. You have your tin-foil hat on, to protect you from the conspiracies that anyone who thinks that maybe, just maybe, a little thought needs to go into things are actually being paid $millions by 'big-oil'.

Presumably this 'big-oil' conspiracy are actually the lizard people that runt he planet?

I'm virtually speechless.

In all the war games, there are hoards of enemies charging at me with the single goal of using my nipples for target practice. Damn right I shoot them back. They've just virtually invaded my virtual country, I am virtually going to virtually shoot them virtually with my virtual gun.

Virtually.

So... If the Russia really did invade the US (as per MW2 and 3) and the US troops returned fire while defending their country, those US troops are committing war-crimes?

Dear Mr. Red Cross,

Are you sure? Did you invent your own game where you abuse civilians, and then complain about it? Aren't you all guilty of horrific war crimes yourselves by playing these games in the name of 'research'?

Daggerfall was almost bug free and had no crashes for me, and worked fine under Windows 95. (There was the occasional bug when trying to complete the randomly generated 'fetch' quest, but that is life. I am sure someone will say that they needed 200 patches or something, but those fixes were generally for bizarre combinations of events.)

Morrowind only 1 bug springs to mind, something about finding a key before you are 'supposed' to doesn't trigger an event. It was patched. No crashes.

Oblivion, an annoying bug in the main quest when visiting someone's house. Was patched. Crashed probably twice in about 200 hours playtime over the years, and that was when it was modded to the hilt with conflicting mods and graphic boosters.

Skyrim, only 35 hours in so far. No bugs, no glitches, no crashes. Graphics could be better when looking at snow (PC on Ultra).

I'm sure there are many users who will scream about how often the game crashed for them. But as the games work for so many other people, then it is obviously their setup, and no developer can test for infinite combinations of drivers, hardware, virus, and registry errors that exist on our machines.

The big shock is the issue with the Xbox version. The xbox version is the only one that has been shown so far because it was "the worst looking version, and we didn't want people to be disappointed, so we didn't show the best version." All the haters and whiners were slamming Bethesda for taking Mircrosoft's money and only showing the xbox version, when in reality they were openly saying that the xbox version was the worst.

Go ahead people, call be a fanboy. I am one after all. I've had no problems with their Elder Scrolls games on many different PCs over the years. People suggesting they haven't tested enough is ludicrous, there is just no way to test so many combinations of events in such an open world. This isn't some crappy on the rails shooter that lasts 6 hours (Thank you Halo 3).

Having said that, and contradicting myself, what the hell is up with the xbox version. No excuse for that considering that is the version they've been showcasing for the last 10 months.

Just waiting for all the "horse armour" comments now. As if Bethesda somehow forced people into buying it. You don't want armour for your horse? Then don't bloody buy it. I didn't, why would I buy useless crap like that? The name kind of described what it was. If people bought it, they only have themselves to blame.

Optional Title

Did you read any of the paper in question?

They discovered that 2/3 of the temperature stations recorded a temperature rise, while 1/3 recorded that temperatures had gone down.

So, using your argument: If you get diagnosed by 3 doctors, and 2 of them say you don't have cancer, while the 3rd one says you do have cancer and need it cut out now, you just ignore that 3rd guy and drive home happy? You don't even spend a little time trying to find out what is going on?

I'm not a sceptic, I happen to believe that we should follow the experts as per Evolution, gravity, and the speed of light. But the comments being thrown around regarding this unpublished, non-peer-reviewed paper are ludicrous. People are acting like a bunch of creationists fawning over a photoshopped picture that they found on Facebook, of Jesus's tomb, complete with Jesus DNA, and a note from his dad with his designs for the Duck Billed Platypus and the Banana.

How about giving them time to get the paper peer-reviewed and let them correct all the wrong citations, and odd methodology of comparing 'Very Rural stations" against "Very Rural Stations" as proof that there is no UHI. Either they made a typo, or they forgot to include the results which compared the rural to the set WITHOUT the rural. Either way, they rushed to get it out the door and it needs an edit.

@ Windrose

"people who actually BELIEVE themselves when they claim they saw who shot first"

Are you on crack? Do you have any idea what you are talking about?

Original: Han shoots Greedo under the table. There is no "shoots first" because there is no second shot. Han just guns him down, using his left had as a distraction while he unholsters with his right.

Current version: A wide shot of a badly animated Han Solo action figure sitting opposite a badly animated Greedo action figure. Greed then shoots at Han from 2 feet away, and for some reason, despite the gun pointing directly at Han's head, the gun shoots almost sideways hitting the corner of the room, allowing a jerky Han to shoot Greedo. It looks like Greedo is now actually aiming at Han's left hand distraction.

Pathetic. It looks like a Robot Chicken Star Wars special (which are great by the way).

I look forward to a 'remastered' Citizen Kane as the snow globe falls to the floor, then shoots off at 90 degrees to take out a Taliban terrorist who is trying to crash a hijacked Rosebud into the Statue of Liberty. That might be the kind of thing you like Windrose, but please don't inflict it on the rest of us.

I'll be buying the BluRays as I want the films in excellent quality. I'll just have to live with 1967 era Doctor Who special effects of Greedo shooting, and Han standing on Jabba's tail.

@ Phud

Your comment raises the question: What are you doing hanging around with a bunch of 14 year olds?

Personally I loved Duke 3D when it came out as it was groundbreaking.

But 4Ever is just coming across as guns for the sake of it, and I am not a fan of Painkiller. I get so little time to play games these days that I need to pick carefully. I will give the demo a blast and hope I am proved wrong (I would love to be proved wrong).

I am sure that Duke already sang karaoke in Duke 3D, but its been a good 10 years since I played it.

Any remake...

... and another bunch of people who somehow think that a new version will destroy their VHS/DVD collection of the old show, or somehow delete the memories from their brains.

In what possible way does it affect the old one if they make an update/remake/film/relaunch?

Chances are it will be bloody awful, like 80% of films and TV shows (from any era, not just the current. We only remember the good ones. For every "Professionals" or "Avengers" there are a dozen crap shows that I can't even think of for this poorly thought out example). But that doesn't affect the originals in any way. If anything it makes them seem better.

Of course, this sort of announcement and the outcry also raises another issue: Do the fans really believe that every old episode was pure gold?

When the new Trek film came out, the die-hards decried it, yet seemed to forget about Spock's brain being stolen, or the operation to re-insert Spock's brain, as talked Spock talked McCoy through the process 1 nerve at a time "Left arm nerve", or the space hippies with Spock's beatnik harp playing, or about 50% of the original shows which were pretty bloody awful (And I say that as a fan).

Nothing new

This has been going on for years. I remember a good 10 years ago a boy had his Action Man gun taken from his Eagle Eyes Action Man before he could board the plane.

I agree it all sounds stupid, but where do you draw the line? Some guns are tiny, and taking a quick look at the home made guns, and weapons made in prisons, they can be very very small. As soon as a size limit is introduced, someone will just make one 1mm smaller. I'm surprised they still allow pens on board planes, with the plans for home made zip-guns so easily available on the interwebs.

Or is it a threat issue? Are the airlines afraid that someone will try to pretend that the 1 inch plastic gun is real and hijack the plane?

Can't they just X-Ray it, then put it on the plane like they do with dutyfree at many airports these days? Then just pick it up when you leave?

Researchers were also recommended expensive, and useless, cables.

"Researchers were also recommended expensive, and useless, cables."

And so beings the debate about the $200 HDMI cable verses the $10 ebay equivalent and how they are the same. Except for the deluded people that can "Clearly tell the difference between an expensive HDMI cable and a cheap one from the online tat bazaar ebay" etc etc.

No word on domestic surge protectors being sold as protection against lightening, despite the packaging clearly claiming they won't protect against lightening?

AMS + BT Shirley a marriage made in heaven...

Wow...

... You must really hate Forza.

Your suggestion that the reviewer is a Forza 3 fan, and therefore hates GT5 is somewhat stupid. Does the release of GT5 somehow delete every copy of Forza 3 in the universe? Does it somehow stop people playing Forza 3?

GT3 was the reason I bought the PS2, and I was eagerly awaiting GT5. So far, it feels just like GT3. Admittedly I am only level 10, but I've been racing over the same tracks as I did in GT3, and they don't look that much better at 1080p on a 42inch plasma. (Please feel free to post your anonymous comments about the poor quality of my TV, or the poor quality of my eyes etc etc, or how I am being paid by the Forza 3 team etc etc).

The menu system is ridiculous, but I can live with it. The fact that I can't change gear ratios, just the top speed on a Fully Customizable Transmission is a serious pain (And surely redefines the meaning of the word "Fully"?)

The graphics are unimpressive, but graphics do not make or break a game for me, so that isn't really an issue. I do wonder why all the GT5 fanbois are so obsessed with the "Amazing next gen graphics" though. Is that all they care about? It seems to be their one defense against any criticism of the game.

80% feels about right for the game. The long loading times on an installed game is very annoying, especially when trying to complete the licenses.

"Is this really true? If it is, why do people bother?"

Casinos and bookies advertise themselves as cash machines/ATMs. They give the illusion that all you have to do is walk in, place a bet, and walk out rich. People want money, and they don't want to work hard for it (myself included), that is why people try.

Counting cards is from a bygone era. A modern shoe with 8 decks will only deal half the cards (if that) and then be replaced. (Cue the flood of pro-gamblers who regularly count cards and break the bank at Monte Carlo every weekend before flying back in they personal yacht to moor up at the Vegas docks).

I used to arb a lot about 6 years ago, and never had a single problem with bookies trying to limit my account. Why? Because I am losing as many bets as I am winning. Even when I was using a bookie for the win and tie, and a 2nd bookie for the lose, there where never any problems. I was just a single user amongst thousands of others who where either betting based on their star sign, tarrot reading, betting that the horse will lose because it won last time, betting that the horse will win because it won last time, betting that the team will lose because they are playing away, the combinations are endless.

The number one sales pitch for any gambling system or tipster is "Don't be greedy!!! If the bookie learns how much money you are making, they will try to close you down!!!"

No, they won't. They couldn't care less. You are a tiny tiny tiny cog in a massive machine. They don't care if you win 1 bet, then lose the next (because your arb won at a different bookie). Casinos even sell books in their casino gift shops about how to win at blackjack/roulette etc. Casinos and bookies love the system sellers. Every time someone buys a "Brand new system that will kill the casinos!!!!!!!" the casino will make money, because counting black and red and doubling your stake each time is going to wipe you out long before you break their bank.

I get huge amounts of spam and physical junk mail for gambling systems and horse tipsters/systems. I find it amazing that so many horse systems exist and apparently seem to make money. They are generally either betting on the horse that won the most, or the 2nd favourite, or betting against the horse that won the most. Yet these contradictory strategies all seem to have achieved "2000% return on investment this year alone!!!!!!!" etc etc Some sort of Schroedinger's Horse that has both won and lost simultaneously? One would almost think they were being a little flexible with the truth.

Arbitrage trading (to make it sound grand) is a good deal if you can spend the time. But it does get your heart racing when one of your bets doesn't go through because the odds have changed and you have to scramble to Betfair to try and limit your loss as much as possible.

Zero-risk? I think not. Low-risk, yes. You are never going to get wiped out, there will always be an exit strategy to limit your losses (e.g. bet £100 in total across 2 bookies, and you might only get £98 back instead of the £102 you were looking for because the odds changed and that was the best deal you could find.) Still better than losing the full £100 by betting on Manchester United because they are playing at home and Jupiter is rising, or any other system that someone tries to sell you.

The biggest issue I have with Arbs is the same as with any other gambling system. IF IT MAKES SO MUCH MONEY, WHY SELL IT? Seriously, if the guys selling the Arb info believe it is so good, why bother with the whole websites, and selling, and credit card companies to handle payments, and fraud prevention and stolen credit card numbers etc. Why not just make a billion keeping the info to themselves? The answer is, because it is time consuming and fiddly. Bear that in mind, they find it easier to do all of that, then sit down in front of their PC and get "Free money from the bookie."

Not to be confused with gambling systems, which are all nonsense. "Find out how to use the casino as your own personal ATM and get millions in free casino money!!! Only 20 copies available for only £97 !!!!!!!!!" Yeah, right. Believe that at your peril.

I gave up arbing because the big bookies stopped having so many good arbs, and I was having to spread my money to more and more obscure bookies with annoying rules for deposit and withdraw.

That time again...

... I love the announcements for sequels/remakes/reboots.

Suddenly everyone forgets that we still have the originals. Everyone behaves as if the makers are going to come to our houses and force us at gunpoint to watch the new material and burn all the copies of the originals.

So what if they are "re-imagining" Buffy? In what way does it affect the greatness that was Seasons 2-7 (Season 1 was dross, come on, admit it).

As for "Hollywood running out of ideas". Seriously? Everything has been done. Bruce Willis has been playing the same character for decade, regardless of if he is called John McClain or Joe Hollenback. Die Hard 2 started out as a script, they changed the name of the main character, and made it into a sequel. It would have been the same film if Bruce's character was called "Don McShane" and the film called "Airport of Doom". The vast majority of actors are typecast for the very simple reason that this is what the paying customer likes to see.

So what if they make a new version of Buffy? None of you seemed to mind when they rebooted the original film as a TV show staring SMG.

Half the shows and films you all watch are based on books, comics, foreign shows/films, and you just didn't even know it, yet are happy to say "OMG!!!! Teh Holllywoodz failz lolz." or something.

I'm a die-hard Trek fan, I even watched Enterprise. I also loved the most recent Trek film. Somehow people seem to forget how truly awful many of the original shows were. And how bad Trek 5 was, let alone Nemesis. In what way does the new Trek film affect what has come before? Does its BluRay release somehow "infect the INTERNET" like a crappy SyFy channel film, and erase every piece of existing Trek material? Does it then delete our memories of Shatner's Kirk and Kelley's McCoy baiting Nimoy's Spock? Star Trek was originally a re-imagining of Wagon Train as pitched by Gene "Wagon Train In SPACE!!!" Roddenbury. Star Wars is just a re-imagining of the Hidden Fortress and Flash Gordon. I'm sure the original Buffy film was just a re-imagining of Van Helsing stories.

Stargate Universe? Its just "Space 1999" or Star Trek Voyager.

Day of the Dead, and any other Zombie film? it's just a re-imagining of Day of the Triffids. Erm, sort of. Well, 28 Days Later certainly was.

What does it matter that they are making a new Buffy? At the very least it will re-spark interest in the original. Look how well DVD sales of the original Battlestar Galactica did when the new version came out.

Personally, I cannot wait for the new versions of Streethawk, Automan, and of course, the one we have all been waiting for, The Whiz Kids. Imagine, and bunch of high school computer geeks solving crimes while pregnant, hooked on crystal meth, being abused by drunken same-sex parents, and probably aided by their loveable alien friend ALF (if I have any measure of Hollywood script writers).

All we need now is a remake of Cheers with "R-Patts" as Sam, and we're sorted.

Hmmm

I've put 35 hours into the game since its UK release on Friday. Admittedly that came with a patch via Steam. But I have yet to encounter a single crash or script error. The closest thing I have seen to a bug is a giant scorpion trying to navigate a very steep hill with comical effects.

My PC was very powerful... 3 years ago. I have experienced a couple of performance issues (such as defending Goodsprings with all those NPCs on screen killing each other) which is rather disappointing because Fallout 3 handled it better.

So far, I am much more engrossed in NV than I was in Fallout 3, which really surprised me given Obsidian's track record.

Wow

With an imagination like that, you should be a science fiction writer.

Let's hope that once you sell a few copies, no one spreads malicious unprovable rumors about you, and then more people claim it is because you have "alot of money and was spoilt by mommy and daddy doesnt make her any more important than me or you, she probably expressed herself in a way that offended someone in some way and the so called bullies weren't happy, all the so called bullies are doing is..... expressing themselves to her in there way and now she doesnt like it."

"Thats the good thing about the internet we are all entitled to our opinions if she doesnt like it then well shes going to have to sue all of us!"

Yeah, I think you are confusing "opinion" with "making up bullshit".

e.g. it is my "opinion" that you are an idiot. And I am entitled to that opinion as you correctly say. However I do not go around posting videos of you on Youtube and making bullshit claims about your sex life, sexual preferences, how many children you have murdered, and all the charity money that you have stolen.

If you really fail to understand the difference, I suggest you seek professional help.

Huh?

"When was the last time you heard of a person being hauled off an airplane for asking if they serve a meal in first class?"

Did you not read the article? He was hauled off the flight for allegedly asking if there were police on board. He might have thought he asked about a meal, but I am fairly confident that the highly trained counter-terrorist agent disguised as a flight attendant saw through his strategy and knew he was actually asking about how many well-armed air marshals were on board.

Won't somebody think of the children?!?!

This is obviously just the first step in a Lunar-Crab-People invasion. First they have opened the roof on their lunar-crab-lair to reveal their network of lunar-crab-tunnels, the next step is surely to launch lunar-crab-missiles at earth.

While they bombard Earth from the lunar surface (or more accurately, just under the lunar surface), the lunar-crab-people's Earth-bound brethren, The Crab-People, will begin their conquest by sending in the elite crab-stormtroopers.

Our days are numbered.

Failing that, no doubt this is just the bad-guy from You Only Live Twice with yet another volcano with a sliding roof-door.

The Onion

Surely this is from The Onion or Daily Mash, or some other satirical site?

"When installed, GodBlock will test each page that your child visits before it is loaded, looking for ... names of religious figures, ... If none are found, then your child is allowed to browse freely."

Peter, Paul, David, Jesus, Mary, Joseph, Mohammad (the most common name in the world?), are these all going to raise flags and block pages? Presumably, the poor child can't even access this article because of it content?

Erm...

"I've never understood why some of The register's people have such an obsession about Wikipedia. It's as if they define themselves in terms of their hatred of the website... and it causes me to think they're probably not much fun to meet in pubs (unless you happen to share this obsession)"

How much did you just write in its defence? Is that what you talk about down the pub?

It's the law!!!11!!!1!1!11!!111!!!!!

As police and expert witnesses are now allowed to use wikipedia as fact gathering source when testifying in court, surely wikipedia is 100% accurate without a single fabrication? I'm sure that US congress were correct when they made their thousand edits http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-6033082-7.html

I for one welcome our wikipedia overlords and look forward to the day when we can all benefit from the cancer cures that Brad&Angelina are currently working on in their top secret laboratory bunker next door to Madonna who is producing an anti-zombification-serum.

RUBIK would be proud.

A RUBIK Magic wired up to a PC.

Now, if they can just make it wireless so that when the evil Deceptacon plane flies and transforms into a boat before crashing into the salty waves to chase Megan Fox and Optimus Prime, it isn't trailing 16 miles of copper.

Dear Points of View...

Why oh why oh why oh why does the BBC continue to waste our licence fee on things like this? Why can't we have more costume dramas featuring that nice Frankie Boyle chap, or hard-hitting in-depth documentaries on the "Rise of Reggi-Reggi-Sauce in Waitrose" narrated by Jonathon Ross? (Think about it).

Instead we have BBC fat-cats too busy to send the work-experience-student to stand in the sun taking pictures of the building. Too busy watching England win the World Cup, or the cricket or whatever it is these BBC fat-cats get up to with my licence fee, more like it.

It was all different during the war. You couldn't even get nylons back then. We had to stain our legs brown with tea and gravy, then draw a line on the back. Tsk, don't get me started on the Anderson shelters.

Surprise surprise

The O2 net-monkeys disagreeing with the O2 shop-monkeys.

Hopefully you got the name of both parties so one of them can be suitable chastised by El Reg at a later date?

I for one welcome our new shop-monkey overlords, deciding how many of each product we are allowed to purchase. It is good to know that in these troubled financial times, O2 refuse to sell you more than one item at a time.

eh?

"and lower stock levels."

Anytime I've actually needed anything from PC World (when I'm desperate, obviously, e.g. my PSU has just died), their stock levels couldn't actually be any lower. To be fair, they were sold out of all 3 types of PSU that they 'stocked'.

That's why mum's go to Iceland.

I'd like to know if his stomach was empty, or if he had lost any weight in that time. Any decomposition or was it too cold?

"Then, once the underlying problem had been fixed, they could be reanimated." Yeah, I saw that episode of Star Trek Next Generation. It wasn't a good one.

I did see a documentary from the year 1987, and N.A.S.A. launches the last of America's deep space probes. In a freak mishap Ranger 3 and its pilot Captain William 'Buck' Rogers are blown out of their trajectory into an orbit which freezes his life support systems, and returns Buck Rogers to Earth five-hundred years later.

He seemed just fine, although develop a propensity for karate chopping aliens in the back.

Backups. Hmmmm

I'm one of those statistics that has never backed up anything. On the 1 hand I've never had any sort of hardware or software failure that warranted restoring backed up data in 20 years of PC computing. On the other hand, it really is only a matter of time...

On some magical third hand, I have nothing really worth keeping on my PCs, other than some docs in My Documents, which really ought to be backed up somewhere.